Overview:

The flagship product of the Aruba Location Services product line is Aruba Beacons. When Aruba Beacons are used in conjunction with the Meridian mobile app platform, they enable public-facing enterprises to infuse their mobile apps with innovative, location-based services.

Aruba Beacons leverage Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) technology to power indoor location and wayfinding, and proximity-aware push notifications at enterprises, stadiums, hospitals and other public venues. The ability to customize the placement of beacons ensures a highly engaged customer experience.

These small, low-power wireless transmitters broadcast radio signals at regular intervals that can be heard and interpreted by iOS and Android devices equipped with Meridian-powered mobile apps from Aruba and our Meridian Engage app development partners. Aruba 300, 310, 320 and 330 series APs with built-in Aruba Beacons, allow you to remotely manage our 4-year battery-powered standalone Beacons.

Not currently running an Aruba wireless network? No problem. The Aruba Sensor includes a built-in beacon and the ability to manage Aruba Beacons in any wireless environment.

Protect the privacy of your guests
Aruba Beacons do not require smartphones to connect or pair with them and do not collect mobile device identity.

Quickly deploy hundreds of beacons
The Aruba Beacons mobile app lets you install beacons, place them on a digital map and configure accuracy on the fly.

Benefits:

Aruba Beacons

Small, low-power wireless transmitters, Aruba Beacons broadcast 2.4-GHz radio signals at regular intervals. Beacons can be heard and interpreted by iOS and Android devices that are also equipped with Meridian-powered mobile apps from Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company.

Aruba Beacons come in two physical formats. Aruba USB Beacons plug into a Wi-Fi access point (AP) or other USBenabled device while standalone Aruba 4-year batterypowered Beacons can be placed anywhere within a venue.

When a mobile device with a Meridian-powered app is within range of Aruba Beacons, guests can receive personalized, proximity-aware push notifications based on their opt-in preferences and see a glowing blue dot that shows their real-time location on a venue’s map.

Aruba Beacons Content and Actions

Aruba USB Beacons and Aruba Battery-Powered Beacons can be configured for either location-based wayfinding or for proximity-aware notifications so that corresponding actions are triggered on a venue’s Meridian-powered mobile app.

Aruba Beacons for location and indoor wayfinding
BLE-enabled mobile devices can receive signals from more than one Aruba Beacon at the same time. If multiple signals are within range, devices can calculate the distance to each Aruba Beacon and use this data to identify the device location.

This can be used to show a mobile app user’s indoor location with a glowing blue dot, and lets them search for directions to nearby products and services. For example, in a crowded stadium, the guest experience is vastly improved by making it easier to find their seats and concessions. And in large retail environments, shopper abandonment is dramatically reduced when customers can use their mobile devices as self-service tools to quickly find the products they want without waiting for someone to assist them.

Aruba Beacons for proximity-aware mobile engagement
Aruba Beacons only broadcast small amounts of data, so Meridian-powered mobile apps must fetch relevant content for them. When a device’s operating system detects an Aruba Beacon signal, it wakes up the mobile app and communicates with the Meridian Editor content management system (CMS) to fetch the appropriate information. This only occurs if guests opt-in and have their BLE radio on.

Push notifications are an effective way to engage guests who opt-in through their mobile devices and who are in close proximity to an Aruba Beacon. For example, a retail customer who is near an Aruba Beacon in the fragrance section of a department store can receive a push notification for “10% off fragrances today.”

Venues can easily manage the campaigns associated with each Aruba Beacon within the Meridian Editor. You can even integrate customer loyalty programs to automate and personalize push notifications triggered by an Aruba Beacon. This occurs automatically without requiring guests to update their mobile app.

As a result, guests who opt-in get more personalized and context-specific communications based on their loyalty program preferences and real-time location in a venue. Retailers and other location-based businesses can upsell products and services and increase share-of-wallet with relevant promotions.

Beacon Analytics
The Meridian Editor houses aggregate analytics data for Aruba Beacons being used for proximity-based campaigns. Venues can easily see the trigger counts (how many times a campaign was sent) as well as the dwell times (the average time a visitor spent in the vicinity of a Proximity Beacon) for specific campaigns by the day or by the hour.

This type of data is very useful for venues that want to understand visitor behavior and measure the success of their campaigns. For example, an airport may use this data to better understand how long travelers wait to get through security lines. A retailer may use this data to measure the success of a seasonal or promotional campaign and use it to adjust inventory placement accordingly.

Managing Aruba Beacons

Monitor the air with Aruba Wi-Fi
Most standalone beacons today lack backend management tools and the few that do cannot scale. This makes it incredibly difficult for enterprise businesses to configure and manage backend hardware, settings, and battery life when dozens of beacons are deployed.

To solve this challenge, venues can leverage their Aruba Wi-Fi infrastructure to effortlessly manage them. Newer Aruba APs – the 300, 310, 320, and 330 series – have BLE built into them; for older Aruba APs, USB Beacons simply plug in to the USB port so that they are able to monitor other Aruba Beacons within range and send relevant management data back to the Meridian Editor.

This enables venues to efficiently manage the content on their Meridian-powered mobile apps as well as Aruba Beacons – all from one user-friendly, cloud-based location. Edits made to the Meridian Editor are instantly applied to Aruba Beacons within the venue.

Instead of having to manually check and track settings and battery levels in a spreadsheet or calendar, you can rely on the Aruba USB Beacons and the Aruba Wi-Fi infrastructure to do the heavy lifting.

Mobile app management tools
An Aruba Beacons management tool — the Aruba Beacons mobile app — pulls venue-specific content from the Meridian Editor and allows you to walk through your venue property and configure and install Aruba Beacons using a mobile device. This step is required to associate the physical location of an Aruba Beacon with a beacon placemark on a digital map. A venue operator simply logs into the Beacons App using their Meridian Editor credentials to automatically see their venue’s maps.

To assign Aruba Beacons to these digital maps, the Aruba Beacons app scans and loads data from nearby Aruba Beacons so venue operators can identify and configure them and save the information to the Beacons app and Meridian Editor simultaneously.

Once the identity of each Aruba Beacon is in the Aruba Beacons app, venue operators can simply drag the beacon placemark to its physical location on the digital map. When updates or changes occur in the Aruba Beacons app, the Meridian Editor is also updated automatically.

No Aruba Wi-Fi? No Problem.
The Aruba Sensor, a small, dual-band 802.11n client radio that also has a BLE radio built into it, makes remote Aruba Beacon management capabilities available to any venue, regardless of their wireless network vendor.

The Aruba Sensor plugs directly into a venue’s AC outlet, hears other Aruba Beacons within a 25-meter range, and automatically sends their data to the Meridian cloud server over a venue’s existing Wi-Fi connection.

BLE Smart devices – Devices that gather and send basic information to more capable devices using less energy than the previous standard. They are single-mode devices and cannot communicate with classic Bluetooth devices.

BLE Smart Ready devices – Devices that can connect can communicate with BLE devices and classic Bluetooth devices. As long as the Bluetooth hardware in the device works with the latest Bluetooth specs, it’s considered Bluetooth Smart Ready.

Beacon – A small Bluetooth Smart device that broadcasts a small amount of data at regular intervals.

iBeacon – The Apple-invented term “iBeacon” refers not to a piece of hardware purchased from Apple, but rather a well-defined protocol that any Bluetooth Smart device can support. Apple and iBeacon are trademarks of Apple Inc.

Aruba Beacon signals can be read from as far away as 200 feet, and proximity can be detected down to a few inches away.

Maximum signal range depends on the physical environment.

Aruba Beacons operate on the same type of radio waves as 2.4-GHz Wi-Fi routers. As a result, the signal can be diffracted, interfered or absorbed by materials in the space such as metal, wood or water.

Aruba Beacons App for Management Supported OS

iOS 7 or newer

Supported Devices

iPhone 4S or newer

iPod touch, fifth generation

iPad, third generation or newer

iPad mini and iPad mini with retina display

Delivery Options for Battery-Powered Beacons

Power

Two 4-year coin-cell batteries within the Beacon

Average power consumption: 0.22 mW (estimated)

Battery capacity 1,000 mAh/each: Total capacity of 2,000 mAh

Battery voltage: 3 volts

With default settings in place, the batteries can last at least two years. However, the chirp frequency can be changed to increase battery life or decrease battery life.

Unique on/off capabilities can be used to turn down the network when not in use and consequently keep the batteries fresh for many years.